


For Sense to Dictate the Memory

by harlequindreaming (armydoctor)



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Ficlet, M/M, in which i put entirely too much thought into tongues, sciencey stuff, sense play (sort of)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-04
Updated: 2013-01-04
Packaged: 2017-11-23 15:00:56
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 919
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/623447
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/armydoctor/pseuds/harlequindreaming
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The tongue is a muscle found on the floor of the mouth, primarily used for the sense of taste, secondary function phonetic articulation. It is covered in taste buds on top, and liberally supplied in nerves and blood vessels. It is commonly, though not entirely plausibly, referred to as the strongest muscle in the human body, and half the time, Sherlock Holmes is convinced that, unless they've bitten it or tasted a particularly orgasmic piece of food, the human race takes the tongue entirely for granted.</p>
            </blockquote>





	For Sense to Dictate the Memory

**Author's Note:**

> Just a little something imported from my livejournal. I'd forgotten about this until browsing my works. I forgot what this was inspired by, and it really does have so much thought put into regarding the sense of taste and touch. Enjoy?
> 
> E for the sexytimes.

The tongue is a muscle found on the floor of the mouth, primarily used for the sense of taste, secondary function phonetic articulation. It is covered in taste buds on top, and liberally supplied in nerves and blood vessels. It is commonly, though not entirely plausibly, referred to as the strongest muscle in the human body, and half the time, Sherlock Holmes is convinced that, unless they've bitten it or tasted a particularly orgasmic piece of food, the human race takes the tongue entirely for granted.

For example: how many people really, _really_ appreciate the fact that the tongue is the only organ that can perform two sensory functions at once? Eyeballs cannot hear and hammer-anvil-stirrup cannot smell and try as Sherlock might, his fingertips _cannot_ taste John's flesh no matter how hard he presses them to the softly moving angel bones on his back. But his tongue, that strange and wonderful part of his anatomy that John has praised time and again for its quickness, its brilliance and (only very rarely, but no less appreciated and meant) its ruthlessness; his tongue that has mapped out the entirety of John's body from the curve of his ear to the hollow of his knee; _that_ tongue, can both taste _and_ feel every bit of John's skin, and that is a fact Sherlock will not stop marveling at. As he mouths the skin over John's scar to taste faintest metal and salt and hospital tang, he can also _feel_ the ruined ridges and raw texture and toughened sinew. And Sherlock worships that sensation, that experience; wants to never, never, never cease imprinting every last bit of John he can into every synapse he can spare.

Even better, Sherlock thinks, is when he takes John into his mouth, hot and hard and throbbing, because Sherlock can simultaneously feel and taste himself _undoing_ John, unraveling him one nerve and blood vessel at a time, until John is nothing more than a shivering, sighing mess of skin and bones and sex beneath him. Sherlock can taste bitter pre-come and feel muscles tensing and taste salty sweat and feel John thrust upward and it is beautiful. This is one of Sherlock's favorite ways to remember John: wanton, devastated, assaulting Sherlock's every sense (the _sight_ of him tangled in sheets, the _sound_ of his voice shaping Sherlock's name, the _scent_ of sex and soap and sweat on him, the _taste_ of John thick and strong on his tongue, the _feel_ of his post-orgasmic tremors). Sherlock files away the imprints on his senses in that special room in his mind palace labeled John, tucks them away neatly in the filing cabinets, that he might extract them at any given moment to relive. Sometimes he forbids himself from accessing them for days, just so when he gets to do it all again it is that much more intense, that much more overwhelming; just so his senses can once more be given over to the full appreciation of _John_ , after a lack of him.

It can also taste and feel the food John prepares, and the medicine John forces down his throat, and the bile that rises in Sherlock's throat when he and John have a row, but none of these are nearly as intoxicating as the taste and feel of John himself, and so Sherlock dismisses them as irrelevant.

And aside from the duality of sense, the tongue is the foremost initiator of speech. It clicks across palate and curls around itself and dips over teeth to form sounds, coherency, _words_ , that allow for easy communication and understanding. It is Sherlock's tongue that articulates the deductions that John finds so brilliant. It is Sherlock's tongue that wraps around the single syllable of John's name with such adoration, whether to ask for tea or point out evidence or beg him to fuck Sherlock harder. It is Sherlock's tongue that worked out that first _Don't leave me_ and the last and latest _I love you_ that left John smiling and bashful and pink to the tips of his ears.

And John's tongue, that strips Sherlock so completely of his control, that does things that should be criminal as well as canonized; that self-same tongue that works Sherlock to orgasm and prescribes antibiotics to elderly women, that snaps out Sherlock's name and moans it into pillows; John's tongue is a paradox so wonderful Sherlock would happily spend days finding out just how many ways it can be so contradictory. He wants to comb over it, test every taste bud, learn its every trick, and if Sherlock could find a way he would hide away in John's mouth so he could see the way that tongue moved whenever John said Sherlock's name and observe every inflection.

And so Sherlock thinks that the human tongue, tiny and pink and wriggly, as easily threatened as it is taken for granted, is a marvel indeed, pedestal-worthy, even. And as he watches John lick a little coffee from his lips over the breakfast table (so different from the way he licks Sherlock's come away, _god_ , how is it that there are so many subtle shifts in the use for that thing?), Sherlock thinks he will never get tired of realizing this fact, and that he doesn't want to, as long as he lives.

A realization reinforced as he leans across the table to lick at a little more coffee that John has missed, and suddenly finds John's tongue wrestling his in his mouth, breakfast quite forgotten.


End file.
